Archive for the ‘Speed Channel’ tag

If you’re heading to the Rolex Monterey Historic Automobile Races, August 17-19, 2007, at Laguna Seca in Monterey, California, you might want to drop in a day early for a panel discussion about racing developments in the last 25 years.

The Evolution to Revolution forum, presented by Toyota, is being billed as “an entertaining discussion with stories of innovation, planning, hard work, exact science and plain dumb luck.”

Speed Channel’s Dave Despain will host and moderate the free-wheeling discussion that includes some of the most influential behind-the-scenes experts in the fields of racing, high-performance vehicles, engineering, aerodynamics and advanced fuels. Sharing their views will be experts: Richard Cregan, Pierre Dupasquier, Herb Fishel, Mario Illien, Richard Karlstetter and Phil Remington.

The forum begins at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 16, at Laguna Seca Raceway’s Red Bull Center in conjunction with Toyota’s sponsorship of the Rolex Monterey Historic Automobile Races. Admission to the “Evolution to Revolution” forum is free to anyone in attendance.

(This post originally appeared in the August 2, 2007, issue of the Hemmings eWeekly Newsletter.)

Go vintage racing this weekend with your recliner and remote control by tuning in to Speed Channel’s reruns of the 2006 Monterey Historic Automobile Races.
The schedule posted on Speed’s Web site shows action scheduled for:
Friday, October 13, from 9-11 p.m. (Eastern time);
Sunday, October 15, from 5-7 p.m. (Eastern time); and
Monday, October 16, from 3-5 p.m. (Eastern time).

Speed will also air action from Monterey Historics again next month on Sunday, November 5, at 3 p.m.
Be sure to check your local listings to make sure they jibe with Speed’s schedule and please don’t blame us if your cable provider chooses to air a dopey infomercial in its place.

(This post originally appeared in the October 13, 2006, issue of the Hemmings eWeekly Newsletter.)

In its ever-widening quest to promote NASCAR, Harleys and half-baked
reality shows, SpeedTV has axed another in a long string of halfway decent
programs that gave the rest of us a reason to tune in once in a while.
Two Wheel Tuesday was just about the only television program that provided
coverage of any of the major motorcycle racing venues and also did a good
job covering any news items of interest to motorcyclists. The program
kicked off a weekly series of motorcycle-related shows on the network and
had been on the air for three and a half years.
If you’re a fan of MotoGP or AMA road racing, start watching now, because it
won’t be long before there’s something more mainstream in its place. Case
in point: Now airing on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. EST in Two Wheel Tuesday’s
timeslot? American Thunder. Hey, you can never have enough Harley shows.
Just ask the Discovery Channel.

(This post originally appeared in the June 29, 2006, issue of the Hemmings eWeekly Newsletter.)

If you’re a US adventure motorcycling fan, it’s been a year full of ups
and downs.
First, Speed Channel quit its Paris-Dakar coverage, instead relegating
it to the seldom-seen Outdoor Life Network, which cut the entire
two-week event down to two hours. Shameful, especially considering that
network does an excellent job providing daily Tour de France coverage.

To the good, we were thankful to see the Ewan McGregor-Charlie Boorman
Long Way Round motorcycle tour on television here, but the folks who put
out the DVD never bothered generating an American version, leaving those
U.S. motorcyclists desperate for something a little more erudite than, say,American Chopper to find a computer that could play a PAL encoded version.

Now, the series, which originally aired last fall/winter in the U.S. on the
Bravo Network, is being re-released in an extended version to U.K.
audiences.
Unfortunately, at least for the forseeable future, there are no
definite plans to release the extended version on any U.S. networks. Maybe
when the winter months finally settle in, we’ll have something to watch.

(This post originally appeared in the July 7, 2005, issue of the Hemmings eWeekly Newsletter.)